On Thursday, December 12, I participated in my first Red Hat Craft Fair. It’s an event held at Red Hat headquarters where the crafty folks or their spouses/family members get a chance to sell their home goods to Red Hatters. I thought it would be a good idea to sell my book and my salsa. It turned out to be a good idea.

First, my book was primed for an open source audience. And there is no better place than the HQ of the open source leader to promote a book about Raleigh being an open source city. My goal was to sell at least 10 books, with a stretch goal of 20 books. I met my goal and sold 10 copies of the book…inching closer to 500 total copies sold. I had free “Open source all the cities” stickers and bookmarks available—which turned out to be a big hit. You can score your copy at http://theopensourcecity.com/.

I went back and forth on selling my homemade salsa. After a record year in the garden, I decided to share the fruits of my labor at the Red Hat Craft Fair. I had mango salsa, pineapple salsa, four-pepper mango salsa (4pm), and late harvest pineapple-mango salsa. I ended up selling 15 pints and sold out of the 4pm salsa. I’m glad I brought in the pints and everyone that stopped by seemed to enjoy the free samples of pineapple salsa. I might be on to something here. But with a limited supply, I’m thinking it has to be just like Beaujolais Nouveau—only available around Thanksgiving and a limited supply. Hit me up if you want to purchase a pint of salsa before the season ends.

Huge shout-out to Mike Esser for organizing and making the Red Hat Craft Fair happen.